


you tell me 'bout your past (thinking your future was me)

by bellabeatrice



Series: All Too Well [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Ballet, Dancer Peter Parker, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Stillbirth, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25856266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellabeatrice/pseuds/bellabeatrice
Summary: “Do you love him?”Peter smiles sadly. “I’m seventeen,” he says. “What do I know about love?”May reaches across the table and takes his hand. “Your mother once said the same thing.”Mary and Peter Parker Realize What It Means to Fall in Love: It Begins and Ends with a Dance
Relationships: Harley Keener/Peter Parker, Mary Parker & May Parker (Spider-Man), Mary Parker/Richard Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: All Too Well [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1831873
Comments: 10
Kudos: 111





	you tell me 'bout your past (thinking your future was me)

**Author's Note:**

> I love Dancer!Peter way too much, so I decided to make a series out of “i’d like to be my old self again (but i’m still trying to find it).” You don’t have to read the first fic to understand this one, but it certainly helps.

They say you can’t find love on the streets of New York City, but Mary Fitzpatrick has spent her entire life defying the odds. She meets Richard Parker on the sidewalk of a college campus neither of them attends.

Their son will attend that university. He’ll major in Dance at first, but then he’ll decide on Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Then he will fall in love again, or maybe it will be for the first time. He will end up majoring in both, and it might take him five years, but he’ll be proud. They’ll all be so proud of him.

Summer is hot in New York City. Richard still wears a leather jacket. Mary still wears closed-toed shoes. 

“You’re that dancer,” he says. “My brother loves the ballet. Mary Fitzpatrick, right?”

“Just Mary,” she replies. “Fitzpatrick isn’t much of a stage name.”   
  
“Mary Parker has a nice ring to it.”

  
Mary thinks for a moment. It’s a moment neither of them should share on a busy New York City street, but they share it anyway. “You know what? You’re kind of right.”

Richard flashes her a smile, and it’s the type of smile you fall in love with. “I’m always right.”

They’ll find out later that he’s wrong. He’s a good man, and he tries to be right, but it will still be a lie when he tells his baby boy years later that he’ll be there for him when he first steps foot in a dance studio or first slides around on a baby skateboard. It’s an entirely human flaw, that sort of hope.

Mary goes to her studio two weeks later and tells them she’s changing her name. She starts her second season as principal dancer with the name Mary Parker, and it’s a name that doesn’t really belong to her -- not quite yet -- but she makes it hers anyway.

They let Richard, Ben, and May Parker backstage after the show because they tell security they’re family. 

“Your last name is Parker?” she exclaims when she meets them. “God, I’m such an idiot.”

“You don’t really think I pulled the name ‘Parker’ for you out of my ass, did you? I was flirting.”

Ben steps forward and holds out a bouquet of orange roses. “I’m sorry my brother’s an idiot. You did good out there, Parker.”

Mary takes the flowers. “You’re the brother who likes ballet? I’m glad to share the name Parker with a man of some sense.”

“Hey!” Richard cries out, and Mary lets out a laugh. She thinks she has an ugly laugh. It’s the same laugh she gives to her baby boy, but it’s beautiful on him. 

“You’ll keep the name, then?” May asks over the lighthearted bickering that broke out between the brothers. “It’ll be good to have another one of us to balance out all the trouble these two get into.”

“I’ll keep the name,” Mary replies, “but you might find that I’m just as much of a troublemaker myself.”

May grins. “Good. You’ll fit right in.”

  
  
  


They say you can’t find love on the streets of New York City, they’re right. As much as Spider-Man frequents those very streets, Peter Parker finds love on a rooftop just outside the city. He meets Harley Keener on the rooftop of the Compound on the first night he spends there.

“You’re that dancer,” he says. “Spider-Man, right?”

“Just Peter,” he replies. “And yeah, I’m Spider-Man. Guess nothing really stays a secret around here.”

Harley smiles, and it’s the kind of smile you fall in love with. Like mother, like son. Peter and Mary Parker have always been suckers for a beautiful smile. “There’s plenty of secrets to go around. Nah, Tony just can’t keep his mouth shut about you. Besides, he has everyone’s measurements on file, and Peter Parker and Spider-Man had very similar -- exactly the same, actually -- leg to body ratios.”

“Could just be a weird coincidence.”

“I live in a building with most of America’s Mightiest Heroes. I’ll take my chances that the things that catch my eye aren’t just weird coincidences.”

Peter smiles because, weirdly, Harley reminds him of Aunt May in that moment. Two normal people in an abnormal world, doing their absolute best and succeeding. “You’re smart. I see why Mr. Stark likes you.”

Harley barks a laugh that echoes in the relative quiet of the lands around them. “I’ve been pissing Tony off since I was twelve. He tolerates me, maybe.”

“You know him, better than I do, probably. You know that’s not true.”

Harley is still for a moment, and Peter starts to worry he overstepped. Then he sighs and sinks down until his back is against the rooftop, still warm from the just-set sun. “Yeah,” he says to the emerging stars. “I know.”

  
  
  


When Mary first invites Richard over to her apartment, he spends a solid minute laughing when he sees her set-up. She’s twenty-two and she lives alone. Her living room consists of two beanbags, two panels of marley, and a barre. “Don’t you get priority time at your studio as a principal of whatever?”

“I’m twenty-two and insecure,” she tells him. “Besides, everyone starts somewhere.”

She feels vindicated by the sheepish look on his face.

They eat corn dogs on the fire escape, and Mary makes fun of Richard for liking mustard. The sounds of the city unfurl around them as they talk. Mary says she never thought she’d be a star. Richard says he never thought he’d make it past twenty-one. Mary says she doesn’t quite believe it sometimes. Richard says he doesn’t either. 

Mary opens a bottle of wine. She says, “My father always liked this kind.”

Richard says, “My grandmother did too.”

At midnight, Mary says, “My father was a secret agent. My mother was in the business too, but she didn’t do field work. She got injured anyway. She didn’t want me to follow in her footsteps or my father’s. She wanted me to be a god.”

Richard asks her, “Aren’t you?”

Mary takes a sip directly from the bottle of wine. “No,” she says eventually. “I’m just Mary Parker.”

“Formally Fitzgerald.”

Mary pauses with the bottle half-raised to her lips. She lets a smile slip onto her face. “Perhaps,” she tells him. “But no one needs to know about that.”

  
  
  


Natasha takes Peter to Varna one winter to see the International Ballet Competition, and Tony and Harley tag along. She spends the Quinjet ride trying to teach Peter a little bit of Bulgarian. Tony and Harley don’t help.

“Teach him some swear words,” Harley says, not even looking up from where he and Tony are huddled over the computer system. 

“Don’t teach him the swear words,” Tony says, in a similar fashion. “Harley swears at me enough in English. I don’t need another one coming at me in a language I can’t understand.”

Peter pipes up, “I’d never swear at you, Mr. Stark.”

“Момчета,” Natasha says, snapping a finger in Peter’s face. “Focus.”

Peter gets a decent foundation in Bulgarian by the time they land, and as a treat, Natasha teaches Peter чекиджия. “It means wanker,” she tells him.

Peter keeps his promise. He doesn’t swear at Tony, but he swears at Harley when he pushes him into the hotel pool. Tony glares at Natasha, and she just winks at him from above the rim of her glass of pina colada. 

Later that night, Peter finds himself on the balcony of his room, murmuring Bulgarian phrases to himself in an attempt to remember what Natasha taught him. She’ll quiz him on his Bulgarian in the morning.She’s tough on him like that, and she’s a great teacher because of it.

“So Natasha did teach you some swear words.” Peter looks up, and there’s Harley on the balcony of the room next to his, looking at him with a grin.

“Just one,” Peter admits. “I called you a wanker earlier.”

Harley lets out a laugh. “I deserved it.”

“You did.”

They’re silent for another minute or two.

Eventually, Harley says in a voice barely above a whisper, “Abbie used to come up with the most ridiculous names to call me when I annoyed her. Her favorite was boxhead.”

“You miss her,” Peter points out.

“More than anything.”

Peter climbs up on the hotel’s wall and skittles over to Harley’s balcony, dropping next to the boy silently. “It’s okay to miss her. It’s okay to be sad.”

“She wants to be a journalist,” Harley says. “She’s going to graduate high school and go to journalism school and make our mama proud.”

“You don’t think you’ve made your mom proud?”

“Do you?”

Peter loses his breath for a moment. In the darkness, he feels Harley lean into him slightly, like an apology. He lets out a breath. “Touche. I’ll drink to that.”

“There’s whiskey and vodka in the mini fridge. Think Tony will notice if we drink any?”

“He will. I accidentally bought porn on the hotel TV in Germany, and Happy found out.”

Harley chokes on a laugh, and Peter’s kind of proud of that. “Diet Coke and Sprite it is, then.”

They bring their drinks out to the balcony again because nights like these are always too beautiful to miss. Peter asks, “What are we drinking to?”

“To making no one but ourselves proud.”

Peter smiles and drinks to that. Their conversation lightens up, and they gossip like grandmothers going out to tea. It’s easier to talk about other people than to talk about themselves. Peter’s head slips onto Harley’s shoulder as he tells Peter a story, and within a minute, he’s asleep.

Harley doesn’t move. They fall asleep like that, on a balcony in Bulgaria on a beautiful night.

  
  
  


Mary’s Tuesday nights are reserved for the weekly Parker women meeting (which will one day be called the Parker wives meeting). After dinner, they meet at a coffee shop near May and Ben’s apartment and talk over countless cups of tea until closing. 

“So you and Richard,” May begins one night. “How’s it going.”

Mary takes a sip of her tea and a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m twenty-two, and I know absolutely nothing about love. I started thinking about it the other day, and I sort of panicked? I’ve already named myself Mary Parker. Does that mean I have to be a Parker forever? Do I have to date Richard forever or, god forbid, marry him?”   
  
May takes Mary’s hand. “Would it be so awful?”

Mary waits a very long time before answering. Yes, she thinks at first. She spent her whole life making it alone in this world, and she was fully prepared to do it forever. Now, she’s twenty-two, and she’s basically married to this man and his family. She doesn’t even know if she loves him. She doesn’t really know what love is.

But she knows that it’s easy to be around him, almost as easy as it is to breathe. Maybe as easy as it is to dance. It’s like everything dark and nervous in her shuts down, and she just gets to let herself be. 

“No,” she says eventually. “I don’t think I’d mind at all.”

“That’s love,” May says with a smile. “Or, at least, it’s the closest thing any of us are ever going to get to it.”

Mary bites her lip. “Isn’t that, I don’t know, sort of settling for second best?”

May shakes her head. “True love is for the fairytales. Us girls, girls grown up too fast, we know a little better than to believe in love like that.”

As much as Mary adores May, she disagrees. Her name is Mary, Mary Parker, and she has always defied the odds.

The next day, Richard proposes to her at his skate park that she visits on Wednesdays for lunch with him. Mary says yes. She cries. She falls in love.

Maybe what she has with Richard’s not true love, but true love is the feeling in her heart when she sees her baby boy for the very first time. She names him Terry, and he dies before the week is over.

  
  
  


May picks Peter up from the Compound after two weeks spent in Varna. She pulls him in for a hug and kisses his forehead, and Peter catches Harley’s eye from over her shoulder. He looks sad. Peter’s seen a glimpse of the depth of loneliness beneath that gaze.

Peter buries his head in May’s shoulder and breathes her in.

Happy drives May and Peter home, and both adults listen as Peter babbles on about the beautiful performances at Varna. May knows more about dance than Happy, so she chimes in every now and then, but they both just let Peter talk until he tires himself out. He falls asleep with his head in May’s lap.

Happy carries Peter into the apartment when they arrive, and Peter wakes up just enough to wrap his arms around Happy’s neck and hold tight. He wonders what he did to deserve being treated like a child. He wants to stay like this forever.

Happy lays Peter down on his bed, and Peter lets go.

Peter wakes up hours later, just as the sun is setting. May makes a box of easy mac, and asks, “So what’s up?”

Peter dodges the question for ten minutes, and then he says, “I spent a lot of time with Harley and swore at him in Bulgarian.”

May ignores that second part. “So you and Harley?”

“Me and Harley nothing, May. We’re friends, or something like that. I don’t know. I think we’re kind of close, and it’s kind of nice. Harley gets me, like really gets me, and he’s not afraid of anything.”

“Do you love him?”

Peter smiles sadly. “I’m seventeen,” he says. “What do I know about love?”

May reaches across the table and takes his hand. “Your mother once said the same thing.”

Peter blinks back a sudden tear. “About my dad?”

“About your dad. And you know what? He was planning to propose to her the next day.”

“So what happened?”

“She said yes.” May runs her thumb against the back of Peter’s hand. “Don’t go getting married any time soon, baby, but don’t be afraid of letting yourself fall in love.”

  
  
  


Richard runs away when Terry dies. Mary goes back to dancing. Despite the months that she took off, her body still remembers. Her body, her body.

It’s a body that betrayed her.

Richard comes back, eventually. He comes to see her first performance since childbirth. He lets her take him home.

“I’m sorry,” he says, burying his head in her body. Mary holds him close.

“We do what we can to cope.” He lifts his head up and wipes away his tears. He wipes away her tears. He lifts her left hand to his lips and presses a kiss to the ring that she never took off.

They get married in the winter, even though Mary had always wanted a summer wedding. People change. Mary falls in love with a wedding gown that has sleeves.

There’s no one by her side as she walks down the aisle. She gives herself away. 

May makes a toast and then Ben does. Mary cries a lot. “To the Parkers,” one of the guests yells when the speeches are over. Everyone drinks to that.

The four of them in the wedding party share smiles. Mary was a Parker long before the wedding took place.

Nine months later, Peter Benjamin Parker is born. “We’ll name the next one after you, May,” Mary promises. 

May smiles as she rocks the little boy in her arms. “You don’t need to,” she says. “This one right here is the only baby I’ll ever need.”

Months later, Mary will fall asleep on the couch with the baby on her chest, and her husband will carry her to bed. She’ll wake up to an empty bed and the sound of a baby crying. Richard will sing the little boy to sleep, and Mary will watch silently from the doorway wondering what she did to get this lucky in life.

  
  
  


When Harley bursts into the lab at midnight one night, it’s just Peter in there. Bruce had bullied Tony into bed about an hour ago but had given up on Peter. “What’s wrong?”

Harley takes two heaving breaths. “It’s my dad,” he manages to say. “He’s back.”

Peter can’t go with Harley to Rose Hill because they’re gearing up for a performance at the studio. Tony wants to go, but Pepper intervenes, and she brings Natasha along with her. 

“It’s for the best,” Tony says, still in his pajamas and even more tired than before, after helping Pepper pack. “Pepper’s good at dealing with people, and Scary Red is, well, she’s good back-up. She’s always worked well with Pepper too. Did I ever tell you about Pepper having the Black Widow as her PA?”

“You did,” Peter says. They watch the Quinjet take off. 

“It’s for the best,” Tony repeats, almost as if to himself. “I think I’d just have made the situation much worse.”

Peter sees through the act in an instant. It’s flimsy; he wonders if Tony has let his guard down, or if he’s too tired to pretend. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“You sound like Pepper. Or Bruce. He’s even worse. Very zen, despite, you know, the whole green rage monster thing.” Tony sighs and turns around, slinging an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “Anyway, I get to spend time with the Spider-Baby, now that Harley’s not hogging you. Midnight snack?”

Peter starts to protest the whole Harley thing. He thinks better of it. Instead, he says, “I want juice pops.”

“You just read my mind, kid.”

They eat juice pops and watch the sunrise. Steve and Sam pass by the window on their early morning run. Tony says, “Cap is going to propose to Metal Man.”

Peter smiles. Tony and Harley are such gossips. “I know. Harley told me.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, and Peter braces himself for his next words. “So you and Tinkerbell, huh?”

“It’s not like that. It’s just-- It’s nice to have a friend.”

“Do you want it to be more?”

“Dunno,” Peter murmurs. “I’m scared of wanting things.”

Tony sighs, and Peter knows he understands. “It gets better, kiddo. That fear. I don’t think it ever really goes away, but you learn to ignore it. You learn that some things, some people, are just stronger and bigger and braver than fear itself.”

Peter smiles sadly. “Is it time for coffee yet?”

“No,” Tony says, snapping immediately into what Harley and Peter like to call his dad-voice. “It’s time for bed.”

“Since when did you become so responsible?”

“I’m old, kid. You and Harley and this whole damn team aged me prematurely.”

  
  
  


Peter is the most beautiful baby the world has ever seen. Mary whispers this into the top of his head as they sway around the living room. Richard’s going through a jazz phase; one of his CDs is playing softly. Mary wonders if Peter will ever know how loved he really is.

Spoiler Alert: he doesn’t. That kind of love is infinite, and it grows with every person he touches. But as Peter grows older, he begins to understand.

The door of the new Parker apartment opens quietly, and Mary smiles, turning away from the window to greet her husband with a kiss. “Hush,” she says, before he can even begin to speak. “Peter’s sleeping.”

Richard nods and presses a kiss to Peter’s head. The baby doesn’t stir. Distantly, Mary hears the shower turn on. She continues swaying to her husband’s jazz and staring out the window at the city she calls home.

Her son will call it home. Her son will dedicate his life to protecting that very city. 

Richard joins her in by the window after a moment. He takes the baby from her arms and sways to the music. Mary sits on the couch. It’s been a very long day, and she should go to bed, but she wants to stay in this moment just a little longer.

Eventually, Richard goes to the CD player, and Mary thinks he’s going to turn the music off. She stands up, ready to go to bed, but the music just changes. Richard shifts Peter to one arm and pulls Mary in with the other. They sway together like that to the sound of Ella Fitzgerald’s voice, their baby in between them. Mary lets out a sigh. She lets her forehead rest against Richard’s.

Like always, when her thoughts drift away, they drift to her baby’s future.

Peter will grow up, and every day, he will look more and more like Richard. He will take after his mom, though. He’ll learn how to dance. He will defy all odds. He will fall in love without even knowing what love is.

He will make mistakes. He will live and lose. He’ll forget what it’s like to be loved.

But he will remember. He always does. He is, after all, a Parker.

  
  
  


Pepper, Natasha, and Harley come home after half a week. Peter skips rehearsal and patrol and convinces Happy to drive him to the Compound to meet them. Harley steps off the Quinjet, takes one look at Peter, and falls into his open arms.

“He wanted to take Abbie,” Harley tells him while everyone else crowds into the kitchen to fight over whose turn it is to make dinner. “Mama wouldn’t let him.”

“So what then?”

“He left. Pepper bribed him with a little money and threatened him with a restraining order, so he took the money and left. For good, this time, he says, but I won’t be surprised if he turns up again in the next five years. Pepper says she won’t offer money next time around, just the restraining order.”

“She’s a good person,” Peter says with a smile.

“The best.”

Harley’s phone starts ringing then, so he leaves the room to take it. Peter wanders into the kitchen and watches the commotion of his family until Tony pulls him into a debate with Happy, Steve, and Bucky about motorcycles.

Peter politely reminds Tony that he knows absolutely nothing about motorcycles.

When Harley returns, dinner is ready, so they crowd around the table and pass around massive plates. After dinner, Harley calls Tony, Pepper, Natasha, Happy, Rhodey, and Peter and asks to talk with them.

“There’s a harvest festival in Rose Hill in about a month,” he says. “Mama and Abbie want you all to come.”

A month later, all of them plus May pile into a Quinjet, and they take off for Rose Hill. Harley sits next to Peter and spends the entire ride telling him about his mom and his sister while Peter nods along nervously.

He’s very oddly nervous. All of the adults shoot one of the two a knowing look before the Quinjet has landed.

“Relax,” May whispers to him as they step off the ramp. “Just be yourself. That’s the best way to make a first impression.”

Natasha whispers in his other ear, “Besides, there’s no harm done if Mrs. Keener doesn’t like you. She’ll just hit you over the head with a frying pan or a wrench.”

Peter sometimes wishes his life wasn’t so chock-full of the most intimidating women in the world. 

He makes a wonderful first impression, and he thinks to himself that it’s probably because he’s had a lot of practice being around intimidating women.

Later that night, the ten of them claim a campfire at the festival and roast s’mores. Someone offers them slices of leftover apple pie from the baking contest. Peter stuffs his face with peach cobbler. 

Up on the platform, the band begins to play some jaunty tune that the whole town knows. Harley sweeps his mother up and they’re some of the first out on the dance floor, a fact which makes Peter’s jaw drop.

Abbie laughs at his expression and goes to find her friends, all of whom run out onto the dance floor and form a circle. Peter thinks violently of school dances. He doesn’t think about homecoming.

Happy gets May on the dance floor, which makes Pepper turn to Tony. “Dance with the kid,” he tells her. “I’m old.”

Peter turns to Pepper, and she takes his hand. “Thank goodness,” Pepper whispers to him with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. “You’re a much better dance partner than Tony.”

Peter laughs and spends the song proving her right. He catches Tony’s eye at one point, and he looks so very proud.

Somehow, at the next song, Peter ends up with Abbie’s hand in his and a challenge dancing in her eyes. Harley winks at him from where he’s dancing with Pepper. “Alright, dancer boy,” Abbie says. “Show me what you got.”

He dips her at the next available chance with absolutely no warning, and she takes it like a champ. “I like you,” Peter tells her.

Abbie lets out a laugh that sounds almost exactly like Harley’s.

Harley comes up to Peter at the end of the song with a smile that’s lighter and wider than Peter has seen in a long time. This is where he belongs, Peter realizes. On a dance floor surrounded by the people he has loved for forever.

Harley taps his shoulder with his. “Could I get a dance with my sister?”

“Sure,” Peter says, and before he can lose his courage, he continues, “if I get one with you right after.”

Harley doesn’t even hesitate. “Deal.” 

As Harley whisks Abbie away, Peter goes back to the campfire and shoves a marshmallow in his mouth before May can stop him. “A dance with my favorite aunt, by any chance?”

May rolls her eyes. “Sure thing, my favorite nephew.”

“I have a dance with Harley next,” he tells her. “What do I do?”

May smiles with all the laughter in her soul reflected in her eyes. “Peter, you do what you do best. You dance.”

So Peter does just that.

The band picks it up for the next song, and Peter takes Harley’s hand. They share a grin. They jump and swing their way across and around the entire floor, laughing all the way. Harley’s cheeks are flushed, and his hair is a mess from all their jumping around. Peter realizes he will never see a sight more beautiful than this.

It’s easy, Peter realizes, to fall in love. It happens just like that. He dances with Harley for the rest of the night. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The Ella Fitzgerald song I was thinking of is “In A Sentimental Mood.” Title from “All Too Well” by Taylor Swift. Catch me on Tumblr: @parknerplease


End file.
